Via Wikipedia, an M7-Priest self-propelled gun. Note that whereas a tank essentially took up much of the role of direct fire artillery, self-propelled artillery generally takes up the role of indirect fire artillery.
This is not a tank.
This is not a tank.
Via Wikipedia, Centurion, the world’s first main battle tank, having a favorable mix of armor, speed and firepower in a single platform.
This is a tank.
This is a tank.
Via Wikipedia, a Schützenpanzer Lang HS.30 currently in the German Tank Museum. As you can see, it is still mostly an APC, with the turret not being the main focus of the design, but nevertheless offering substantial firepower.
Despite its location, this is not a tank.
Despite its location, this is not a tank.
Via Wikipedia, a BMP-3, prominently displaying both its main armament and the All-Purpose Soviet Log attachment (The USSR may be gone, but the All-Purpose Soviet Log survives!). You can see the evolution in design: greater emphasis on the weapon, but this is still primarily a troop transporter with a lot of internal space for the purpose.
This is not a tank.
This is not a tank.
Via Wikipedia, the Bradley (in this case, M3), probably the single worst not-a-tank offender for its appearance. One thing that confuses people in this is scale: the Bradley is taller than the Abrams (just about 10ft to 8ft), so it is easy to mistake the proportions. Moreover that height also goes towards the design consideration: tanks, because of their offensive role, need to have lower profiles so they can fire and then hide behind things (‘turret down’ or ‘hull down’ position); the Bradley’s role is different – it has to fit a bunch of dismounts and/or scouting gear – and so it ended up a lot taller.
This is not a tank.
This is not a tank.
Via Wikipedia, a set of Caiman MRAPs deployed in Iraq. I actually use this vehicle when talking to my students to talk about trade-offs in the kind of conflicts a force prepares to fight, because the improvements that make an MRAP safer in an urban insurgency would render it much less viable in a large-scale conventional conflict than thinner-skinned, less well armored (but lower profile and faster) vehicles.
These are not tanks.
These are not tanks.
So What is a Tank?
In many ways, the role a tank fills hasn’t changed much since WWII when ‘engage other tanks’ was added to its list of jobs: tanks provide offensive ‘punch’ and firepower to allow infantry to advance, seize ground and maneuver in an environment where, thanks to machine guns, even small enemy forces can put out a lot of bullets to otherwise prevent infantry from doing those things. Tanks also need to engage other armored vehicles and potentially fortified positions. Doing those two jobs require that tanks heave the heaviest armor and the heaviest main gun possible, which both precludes them doing other things (like moving infantry) while at the same time demanding that they be tracked in order to manage the weight of that stuff.I don’t think a tank needs to have a turret, by this definition, to be a tank, but most tanks have turrets. But many non-tanks also have turrets. The key here is role and function, not any particular design element.
Collections: When is a ‘Tank’ Not a Tank?
(There were some technical difficulties with this post when it first went live. They should be resolved now. My apologies for anyone who got multiple email updates as a result of efforts to get the…
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